Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 434
December 6, 2013
Life After Nintendo
There are several dozen tracks thus far in the “sound diary” credited on SoundCloud to Corruption, who gives as a residence Funabashi, Japan. Many are noisy escapades, tagged simply as “sound diary,” while the one dated “2013.11.19″ and given the subtitle “like a moth to a candle” bears a second tag: Nanoloop. That’s the name of a popular piece of electronic music software that originated on the Nintendo Gameboy and has been since ported to iOS and Android. What was, back in 1998, an esoteric dream of handheld music-making has become pop culture, an everyday activity. In Corruption’s hands, Nanoloop makes sequences of shiny chiming jangles that ebb and flow like a low-resolution tide. There’s a glitchy quality to it at times, lending the work a welcome complexity, a dark undercurrent to its slow pace. Corruption does not identify which edition of Nanoloop is employed.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/corrption. More on Nanoloop at nanoloop.com. The above screenshots are from the Android version.
December 5, 2013
Disquiet Junto Project 0101: Analog Binary
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.
This project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, December 5, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, December 9, 2013, as the deadline.
Tracks by participants will be added to this playlist as the project proceeds:
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0101: Analog Binary
Record the audio of three objects in your home or workplace that have on/off switches. Capture the unique sound of them being turned on and off. For each of the switches, record several seconds of this on/off action so you can create loops of a steady pace. Then create an original piece of music that employs phase shifts — that is, in which the tiny distinctions between loops create noticeable patterning as time progresses. You can use some light processing, but the sense of “switch-ness” of the source audio should never be lost.
Deadline: Monday, December 9, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your track’s length should be between two and five minutes.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto.
Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0101-analogbinary” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
More on this 101st Disquiet Junto project (Make a phase composition based on the sounds of three switches) at:
http://disquiet.com/2013/12/05/disqui...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Associated image found via:
December 4, 2013
Sound of Commerce
John Kannenberg is a sound artist with a particular interest in place. Much of his work is raw or lightly edited recordings of physical environments, notably art museums. He has, in the past, reversed the idea of sound art by making sound art of places that house art. He travels with his audio recording equipment as others might with a camera or a sketch book. What follows is his audio of a shopping mall in the U.K. It is the sound of commerce, of activity and inactivity, of daily life: a barker, passing conversation, thick local accents, even the squeak of shoes against the floor. Framing lends the mundane a sense of drama. Repetition lends structure, narrative.
Track posted for free download at soundcloud.com/johnkannenberg. More from Kannenberg at johnkannenberg.com.
December 3, 2013
Sound by Fire
That is how Ernest Gonzales sums up his grief, and his way through grief: “Sound by fire.” He reports in the liner note to his new, 11:13-long piece “Cremation” that after the passing on a single day last month of his grandmother and of the man he describes as the closest thing he had to a grandfather, Gonzales took the electric guitar he received in fifth grade and ceremoniously burned it to ashes. The source audio of that destruction yielded this music.
He writes:
“It was with this instrument that I learned how to make music. There’s a lot of sentimental value with that guitar … that’s what made it really difficult for me as I plugged it in and placed it on the fire. I recorded the electrical signal the guitar made as I cremated it. I recorded the ambient sounds of the fire and my backyard as well and then took all of it into Ableton for some final touches. … The song is 11 minutes and 13 seconds. 11/13 for the day both my grandparents left earth.”
The result is an extended rumination, like a bell struck once and left to ring on and on, a full-throated and yet world-weary drone that simultaneously signals sadness and fortitude. It’s a tuned thing, this drone. On first listen, it seems singular in its capacity for bleak, systemic, sonic consumption, but in fact the pitch varies as it proceeds, like a song too slow to recognize as a song.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/exprecords. More from Gonzales at twitter.com/ernestgonzales and whileonsaturnsrings.wordpress.com. Gonzales, also known as Mexicans with Guns, earlier this year released the excellent Atonement album with Diego Bernal. Both men are based in San Antonio, Texas, where Bernal represents District 1 on the City Council. Here’s a stream of that Atonement record:
Atonement by Diego Bernal & Ernest Gonzales
December 2, 2013
Music for (and by) Software Testers
“This is music I make to listen to while at work,” says Mark Rushton of Iowa City, Iowa, at the start of the 60th episode of his Ambient Podcast. For some two decades, Rushton has worked as a software tester, and in his off hours he is a prolific maker of electronic music. As he explains in the episode, “I create my own soundtracks.” The podcast episode is under a quarter of an hour in length and it features Rushton introducing three tracks from his most recent album, titled Machines. The pieces are all rhythmically ambiguous, including a shuddering thrum that takes its name, “Crandic,” from the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Railway. The third, “Hello Friends,” was recorded in front of an audience and is an example of what he describes as “live hyper-micing,” about which I’m looking forward to learning more.
The full Machines album, from which these tracks are excerpted, is at markrushton.bandcamp.com. More about Rushton’s podcast at markrushton.com. Image from flickr.com.
December 1, 2013
Desiccated Folk from Tara Jane O’Neil
The new album from Tara Jane O’Neil (a founding member of Rodan), Where Shine New Lights, isn’t due out until late January, but its releasing label, Kranky, has posted an initial track for free download. Titled “Wordless in Woods,” it’s a gorgeous, slow-motion, desiccated-folk track. O’Neil’s voice is a solitary component amid a lulling hum, the attenuated guitar played at such a pace that the light feedback of what could be a bum cord often rivals it for presence. For RIYL context, the sense in which the tracks strives to delay each passing phrase brings to mind Earth, while its gentleness touches on Low. The closing minute, an out-of-the-blue reverie, hints at O’Neil’s greater ambition. This is an album to look forward to. Where Shine New Lights comes out January 27, 2014.
Guests on the album include Tim Barnes, Jean Cook, Corey Fogel, Anna Huff, Daniel Littleton, Elizabeth Mitchell, Ida Pearle, and Wilder Zoby. Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/kranky. More from O’Neil at tarajaneoneil.com.
Top 10 Posts & Searches of November 2013
I haven’t done one of these “best of” posts in some time, but they seem useful, especially to new readers.
The 10 most popular posts on this site during November 2013 were: (1) an update on my forthcoming book in the 33 1/3 series on the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume II in which I listed the chapter titles, (2) a demo by musician Dean Terry of the iSEM app (an iOS adaptation of the 1974 Oberheim SEM synthesizer), (3) music by Monolake derived from an airport soundscape, (4) a shoegazey track by Westy Reflector, (5) news of an old Oval album made available for free download, (6) a Disquiet Junto project based on a Ford Madox Ford observation, (7) an autobiographical Disquiet Junto project, (8) code in three different programming languages used by participants in Ford Madox Ford project, (9) the 100th Disquiet Junto project, and (10) an FAQ update to the Disquiet Junto.
The 10 most popular search returns of the month were: gauzy, register, xenakis, anniversary, guardian, compilations, rendition, topic, conlon, joke.
November 30, 2013
1 from the 7th Sequence’s 30
Among the best free-download ambient-leaning experimental music projects is the Sequence compilation series. Each collects a bounty of recent work by a wide range of contributors. The latest, Sequence7, is 30 tracks in all, the selection whittled down from approximately 200 that were submitted for consideration. The recording artists include such notables as Radere, Moon Zero, Guy Birkin, Masaya Ozaki, and Subnaught. Many of these Sequencers have participated in the Disquiet Junto series of weekly creative-restraint composition prompts. A highlight of the current album is Linear Bells, aka David Teboul, whose “San Francisco Broke My Heart” is an aching drone of cello, piano, and field recordings, a thick veil of maudlin langourousness. The sawing on the cello brings to mind the song-less country soundscapes of Boxhead Ensemble, while the way the piano peeks out of the haze suggests moments from Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon.
Track available for free download directly at soundcloud.com/linearbells. More on the album at futuresequence.com. More from Linear Bells (David Teboul) at linearbells.bandcamp.com and twitter.com/linearbells.
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
It's a Kev Brown instrumentals morning. ->
Google Hangouts is nifty but, based on recent experience, response time and interface are not SMS-ready yet. ->
Oval put up his great "hyperreal" band release the Oh EP for free download: http://t.co/JWzQ8EQnl1. Free for a limited time. ->
Thanks! MT @bldgblog: And @disquiet will be hosting some acoustic thoughts and electronic sonic ambience on @Gizmodo: http://t.co/2egRy26fnd ->
It's 2013 and people still freak when an email list accidentally goes from one-to-all to all-to-all. (For the record, not one of my lists.) ->
Oooh, my Nexus 7 just got 4.4. ->
Excited to have http://t.co/0sUii6Un65 join http://t.co/iI8LCKRNyd + http://t.co/knBSYOh2nb beneath the Gizmodo umbrella. ->
http://t.co/1z7O7QbuD5 #nifty ->
I've got a $50 credit to the OS X App Store and for the life of me I can't think of anything I particularly need. ->
No everyday word seems to confuse Swype-style keyboards as much as "thanks" does. ->
When bitcoin hits its 21 million cap, Steven Moffat will figure a way out of it. ->
Hobby: collecting breathless descriptions of retina screens in advance of 4k arrival. ->
Me too: MT @ablerism: Pleased to join @nathanunbound @disquiet! RT @Gizmodo: Say hello to 3 new subdomains on Gizmodo http://t.co/ERpEnYjwFP ->
Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FPYND6scRB ->
Can't find it online, but the hyperreal face-mask trailer for The Following is hella "Come to Daddy." ->
Now my Nexus 4 has 4.4, so it's caught up with my Nexus 7. Email and Feedly are a little troublesome, but it'll work out fine. ->
It used to be that a good article had a good ending — but I’d say these days a good article “ends” with good comments. ->
The Unsilent Night schedule is online: http://t.co/3X9DwoJVpC. Brussels, NYC, and Saskatoon are booked. San Francisco is TBA. ->
.@westyreflector If a single was often an ad for an album, then a video was often an ad for an ad. in reply to westyreflector ->
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving … and the 100th (!) weekly @djunto project. ->
No sound class this week. Next week: online communities, digital music retail, mapping cultural connections. ->
Looking forward to #BlackMetalFriday. It's gonna be a full day of playlists seeded with Sunn O))) + Celtic Frost + Slayer. ->
I'm thankful for lots, but for the moment I'll restrict myself to the 400+ Disquiet Junto folks who share their time and creativity weekly. ->
The first @djunto project was about ice, way back the first week of January 2012. The 100th weekly project (tonight!) is about vapor. ->
Please record the sound of water boiling and make something of it: http://t.co/24OADPUIZw. ->
Major thanks to @soundcloud for hosting the @djunto projects! Here's to another 100 consecutive weeks: http://t.co/4C8WH92xro ->
The Rankin/Bass “Frosty the Snowman” is weird. It's like a musical with just one song. ->
Kitchen glitch. MT @lownote: Spring on tea kettle broke as I went to record for @djunto. Bummer until I heard the frustrated sound it made. ->
Main sound in house now: dryer. Deep drone emanates from back of house, but clatter of zippers bounces off dining-room wall. Surround sound. ->
November 29, 2013
The Sound of Melting Pewter
Few sounds become as routinized as those of one’s own workplace. The process of routinization breeds familiarity, which in turn lends these everyday sounds something akin to transparency. We learn to listen past them, to listen through them, even when they have an intensity that visitors might find distracting, or even annoying. For his new release Oído con plomo, the Colorado-based musician and sound artist C Reider has created a single track that is three quarters of an hour in length and that is comprised of recordings made at the pewter casting studio where he has been employed for 17 years. The sounds move back and forth between drone and rhythm, often situated in a space somewhere in between. Sometimes the sounds are especially peculiar, standing out from the tapping and whirring of machines. Around a fifth of the way through, for example, there are tonal elements like dolphin song, alternating with the fundamental activities of what suggest the manual manipulation of materials.
As antiquated as the idea of pewter casting may seem, the modern world invades on occasion, as when what appears to be the sound of telephone ringing appears. Much of Oído con plomo is the thick white noise of background activity. The source audio was recorded in 1999 and 2013. Reider’s piece brings to mind Vanessa Rosetto’s recording of the process of packing boxes of books, and Lauri Warsta’s fictional audio work “Dictaphone Parcel” of a box experiencing surveillance as it is packed and shipped.
The release is available for free download from the netlabel Impulsive Habitat. For those unfamiliar with the concept of a “netlabel,” it is an online record label that actively, purposefully makes its releases available for free download. There are as many as 500 of these netlabels currently in existence around the world.
The Reider Oído con plomo file is not easily streamable here because it is only available as an MP3 in a Zip file, or as a standalone FLAC, or as a FLAC in a Zip. Both Zips include the cover art. Get the album at impulsivehabitat.com. More from Reider at his vuzhmusic.com outpost, which houses two netlabels that he administers: Dystimbria and Derivative.
